Meyer "Mike" Liebowitz
In the late 1960s, a Puerto Rican street gang founded in Chicago in 1959 transformed itself into a communist civil rights organisation, the Young Lords, with its main branches located in Chicago and New York. Inspired by the Black Panthers, its members combined political activism with neighbourhood assistance. On 17 June 1970, the Young Lords hijacked a municipal truck equipped with an X-ray machine for tuberculosis screening and took it to East Harlem to give their community better access to this important test. In 1970, New York had twice the number of infections as the US average. After taking control of the truck, technicians joined the action to operate the X-ray machine. In three days, 770 people were tested, compared to the usual number of around 300 for the same period.